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ActionAid World Food Day Release
In the run up to the November World Summit on Food Security, the Hunger Inquest film seeks to uncover the causes of 1 billion people going hungry, asking whether this disaster is due to natural causes, if it is a violation of rights and most importantly, is anyone to be held responsible? It talks about the current drought situation in Kenya and features an area where ActionAid Ireland works in West Pokot in Kenya and in Uganda which are both featured as part of this film.
Governments’ ‘perverse policies’ making hunger worse
October 16th - World Food Day - Some of the poorest countries in the world have made striking progress on hunger, while some wealthier countries, such as India lag behind, new findings from ActionAid show.
“It’s the role of the state and not the level of wealth, that determines progress on hunger,” said Anne Jellema, ActionAid’s policy director, launching the scorecard report Who’s Really Fighting Hunger?
“Every six seconds a child dies from hunger, but this scandal could easily be ended if all governments took determined action.”
ActionAid has investigated what 51 governments are doing to tackle the billion hungry. The scorecard report shows that China, ranked second out of the developing countries, cut hunger numbers by 58 million in ten years through strong state support for smallholder farmers. By contrast, in liberalizing India, thirty million more people have joined the ranks of the hungry since the mid-nineties.
Brazil comes out top in the rankings of developing countries, having cut child malnutrition by 73 per cent in just six years through extensive investment in smallholder farmers and a strong package of social welfare policies.
Ghana and Malawi, ranking third and fifth among developing countries, have demonstrated that with political will there is a way. In just a few years, Malawi moved from recurring famines to food surpluses by ramping up state support to agriculture.
Speaking from a rally in famine-stricken Kenya - one of the twenty organized by ActionAid globally - ActionAid's food rights coordinator, Nixon Otieno said, “It is a scandal that one in ten Kenyans needs emergency food aid, while we export fruit and vegetables to European supermarkets. Our government and donor partners must invest in poor farmers who grow food for local markets. Permanent safety nets must be put in place so that no one starves for lack of income.”
Otieno also slammed rich countries for contributing to hunger by allowing climate change to worsen. “Climate-related droughts and floods are already causing food crises in my country and across Africa. Rich countries must cut their carbon emissions now.”
Developed countries fare even worse in the report. The United States scores woeful 8 out of 100 on hunger eradication, while Italy scores just 19, mostly because of their miserly aid to agriculture. Overall, donor countries reduced aid to agriculture budgets from 16.8 per cent of all official development spending in 1979, to just 3.4 per cent in 2004, despite signing up to the UN goal to halve hunger by 2015. The US and EU also promote biofuels, which displace food crops. Germany spends a staggering $23 per person per year on biofuel subsidies.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are clear lessons to be drawn from our top performing countries,” said Jellema. “Massive and urgent support to poor farmers, and social welfare programmes for vulnerable groups, are needed now to reverse growing global hunger. At the World Food Summit next month, donor countries need to announce an additional $23 billion annually to fund these measures.
ActionAid World Food Day Release - Who's really fighting hunger? PDF (1.72MB) »